Nine LGBT activists and their friends were attacked in a village in southern Armenia by a group of 30 men,reportedPink Armenia, a Yerevan-based NGO. Two were hospitalized with serious injuries as a result of the August 3 assault, which the activists said was the worst attack on LGBT Armenians in memory. The attack posed a challenge for the new authorities, which was brought into power by a wave of liberal activists but still has to maintain the support of the country's socially conservative majority. As of three days after the attack took place, no senior official had addressed the issue. "We expected some kind of statement or condemnation from the government but there has been nothing so far," Mamikon Hovsepyan, the executive director of Pink Armenia, told Eurasianet. "The government is downplaying LGBT issues for the present in order to concentrate on Electoral Code reform and cracking down on corruption so they are unlikely to be particularly vocal on such issues for the time being.”